A Deadly Cliche (A Books by the Bay Mystery)

her balance, a strong gust snatched her hat away.
    “Damn!” Olivia tried to shout as she yanked on the generator’s pull start, but her words were stolen before they could even leave her mouth. The generator roared into life and Olivia felt an exaggerated sense of triumph.
    Her smugness was short-lived, however, for when she climbed into bed, she found it impossible to sleep. Ophelia pounded on every surface with fists of wind and water. It didn’t help that the last report Olivia had seen on her tiny television in the kitchen had been of a missing fishing boat and the plight of its five-man crew.
    Lying in the dark with Haviland burrowed under the covers at her feet, Olivia couldn’t push away the memories of her final night with her father. She was tired of remembering his wild eyes and raised fist, of imagining him falling overboard and his body sinking to the cold depths where no sunlight penetrated, of wondering if the fog and sea had ruined her or rescued her. But the memories wouldn’t leave her room.
    Shortly after midnight, she decided that the only way she’d sleep was by downing a few fingers of Chivas Regal. She’d just poured a glass when someone knocked hard on the front door.
    Olivia blinked but didn’t move, a shiver rippling up the skin of her back.
    “Who’s there?” she shouted a challenge and was stunned when Chief Rawlings bellowed in reply, “It’s Sawyer! Open the door, Olivia!”
    She immediately complied. “What are you—”
    “Pack a bag,” he ordered, stepping in out of the rain. Turning, he used both arms, locked at the elbows, to close the door behind him. “You can’t stay here. The worst is yet to come.”
    Water dripped from the chief’s regulation rain cape and boots. His face was pinched with anxiety and exhaustion and his presence filled up Olivia’s spacious kitchen as though he were ten men, not one.
    “But I’m fine,” Olivia managed to protest. “Aren’t there people who need you more than me? Those living near the shore or in trailers by the river? This house was built to withstand this type of storm. I’ve got—”
    Rawlings reached her in two strides. Grabbing her arm, he gave her a rough shake. “Don’t be a fool! I know you’re capable and tough and independent, but this”—he pointed out the kitchen window—“is more than even you can handle! Now go upstairs and pack a bag. I’m taking you with me if I have to cuff your hand to my own wrist!”
    Sawyer’s eyes were blazing with filaments of jade green. He smelled of mud and coffee and wet rubber. Olivia raised her arm and touched the end of a soaked lock of his salt-and-pepper hair, catching a fresh drip between her fingertips. The chief’s face softened instantly. Seizing her hand, she thought he might pin it behind her back and make good on his threat to place her in handcuffs. Instead, he lowered his chin and kissed her palm, like a knight receiving his lady’s favor. “Please come with me. I can’t do my job when half of my mind’s on you.”
    Inexplicably, Olivia now remembered that she was angry at the chief. “And where would I stay?” she asked. “With you?”
    “If you’d like. I have a guest room. It’s nothing fancy, but I’ve got a generator.”
    She shook her head. “I bet your place is still filled with your wife’s things. I . . . couldn’t stay there.”
    Pain flashed into Rawlings’ eyes. She’d hurt him by assuming that he surrounded himself with the relics of the past.
    “Then go back to Flynn’s,” the chief said through gritted teeth. “You should have stayed put at his place a little longer.”
    Olivia drew back. “Have you been following me?”
    Rawlings picked up his saturated cap from the counter. He wouldn’t look at her. “Last chance. Are you coming with me?”
    Even though every cell in her body crackled with desire and the soft flesh on the center of her palm where Rawlings had kissed her felt molten, Olivia knew she had ruined the opportunity to reach for the man she truly wanted.
    Sawyer Rawlings had driven all the way to the Point to carry her to safety. He’d interrupted the haunted musings of her past to stand drenched and weary in her kitchen and she had responded by irrevocably spoiling his noble gesture.
    Not knowing how to make amends, Olivia said nothing.
    By the time she realized that an apology would have been a good place to begin, Rawlings had walked out the door and into Ophelia’s aqueous embrace.

Chapter 8

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